The start of something new

To Joern Mothes, the landmark event was also his first opportunity “to change” the German Democratic Republic (GDR) — more commonly known in English as East Germany.

He had been given an opportunity to leave after November 1990 and the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War and German reunification within less than a year. But he had a better reason to stay, “maybe to begin something new,” he recollected.

The human rights and environmental activist was invited by the German Institute in Taipei and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy to give a keynote speech at the unveiling ceremony of a piece of the Berlin Wall in the foundation's garden on Monday, for the 20th anniversary of the toppling of the Berlin Wall.

“It was one of the happiest moments of my life,” Mothes, who grew up in East Germany, told The China Post on Nov. 10, before describing his mixed feelings towards his work in the opposition, his hope to change the society and the Stasi — abbreviation for Staatssicherheit, literally East Germany State Security.

Founded in 1950, the Stasi was one of the most repressive police organizations in the world. It infiltrated almost every aspect of life in East Germany, using torture, intimidation and a vast network of informants to crush dissent.

Millions of Germans worked for the Stasi and provided reports on friends, family, colleagues or lovers. The files, which would stretch for 112 km if laid out flat, were opened up to the public in 1992, exposing a web of betrayals.

“We challenged the logic of the party,” he said on his first environmental activities in the late 1970s when he was only a teenager. “There was so much pollution and nobody was really doing anything about it. So I organized a tree-planting activity with some of my friends.”

The event triggered the opening of the first reports in his personal file in the Stasi, which he was able to access in 1992, before taking a post in 1993 at the Stasi Archives for the Federal State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and served two terms, from 1998 to 2008, as its commissioner.

“It was unbelievable how deep they penetrated into my personal life,” he said, recalling that police placed microphones into his bedroom, made copies of all letters from his friends and put them into his file.

Yet, he remarked that the German society was able to deal with the communist period, as most victims didn't want revenge but rather consideration.

The most important for those who were persecuted, he noted, is to understand why he or she couldn't get into a university or obtain a job for instance. As soon as they could understand why, they were able to start something new, he pointed out.

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